Twelve British soldiers have been injured, eight of them seriously, in a major traffic accident in Estonia over the weekend, Sky News has reported. Three of the troops who were airlifted back to the UK remain hospitalized.
The UK has had an army brigade in Estonia since 2016, as part of a NATO mission intended to bolster the Baltic state against the alleged Russian threat.
“Several British soldiers deployed on Operation Cabrit in Estonia were injured in a road traffic incident last Friday,” a spokesperson for the defense ministry in London said on Monday.
“Following hospital treatment in Estonia, eight personnel were flown back to the UK on an RAF C-17 for further treatment. Five have since been discharged and three are being cared for at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham,” the spokesperson added.
According to Estonian media, the crash happened on Friday afternoon, during a major snowstorm that struck much of eastern Europe. Two civilian cars crashed on the Narva-Tallinn highway, resulting in a six-vehicle pile-up involving three minibuses carrying British soldiers back to their base at Tapa.
Five civilians were also hurt in the pile-up, the Estonian outlet Postimees has said. According to Estonian police, the two vehicles that started the chain reaction were a Volvo S80 driven by a 37-year-old woman and a BMW 530D driven by a 62-year-old woman.
According to the British Army, there are about 900 troops taking part in Operation Cabrit. In addition to the Rifles, the current deployment includes personnel from the King’s Royal Hussars and the Royal Lancers regiments, both armored units armed with Challenger 2 tanks. British troops are not deployed only in Estonia, but in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland as well.